The present invention generally relates to display screens. More specifically, various embodiments of the present invention relate to one or more apparatuses and methods for easy diagnosis, repair, and maintenance of an electronic commercial display screen.
Electronic commercial display screens have been commonly deployed for indoor or outdoor advertisements and information displays in buildings, stadiums, and commercial signage structures. Unlike static (e.g. paper-based) commercial signage, electronic commercial display screens can display dynamically-changing information and readily update display contents using a computer or another electronic medium locally or remotely connected to the electronic commercial display screens.
Most of today's electronic commercial display screens are based on liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, plasma display panels, or light-emitting diode (LED) displays. Typically, LCD's and plasma display panels are used for indoor commercial display applications, while LED displays are used for large outdoor electronic boards or signage. In case of LCD or plasma display-based commercial display screens, if a desirable effective display area is larger than the size of an individual panel, it is a common practice to juxtapose multiple number of panels to enable a big display screen, which comprises a plurality of display panels with linked and/or synchronized video data coordinating the plurality of display panels.
Regardless of a particular display screen technology (e.g. LCD, plasma, LED, and etc.) used for a commercial display screen, it is common for the commercial display screen to malfunction during its display operation. Any operational downtime resulting from a malfunction of a commercial display screen is undesirable, as the operational downtime translates to lost opportunity to convey commercial information or other intended visual information to viewers near the commercial display screen.
In order to minimize opportunity costs related to a malfunctioning commercial display screen, certain businesses prefer a commercial display system operator to repair a malfunctioning commercial display screen in a few hours from the initial reporting of the malfunction. In many cases, such an urgent repair preference cannot be satisfied, as it may take a few hours to diagnose and identify the causes of a malfunction, let alone to repair a malfunctioning display screen. Furthermore, most diagnosis, inspections, and repairs of a commercial display screen typically require a maintenance worker to dismount the entire commercial display screen from a wall or another building structure, which is time-consuming, unsightly, and even dangerous.
Therefore, it may be desirable to devise an apparatus which enables easy diagnosis, repair, and maintenance of a commercial display screen. In addition, it may be desirable to devise a related method for easy diagnosis, repair, and maintenance of a commercial display screen. Furthermore, it may also be beneficial to incorporate a novel device architecture which provides a high level of resilience against an operational failure of a commercial display screen.